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EPISODE 1: THE SIGNATURE HOUR.
The science is clear: when parents are stressed, babies pay the price. That is why improving conditions for families with young children is one of the best investments any nation can make.

Interactive: Family Leave Shuffle

Paid leave is the rule, not the exception, in every other rich and middle income nation. How is it that in the wealthiest nation on earth we ask so many parents to make a trade-off: you can take time to recover from childbirth, bond with and nurture your new baby, but you’ll have to forfeit your pay?

Discover Article

Food banks to feed the hungry have become as much a part of our economic landscape as tax breaks for billionaire hedge fund managers. Neither seems to provoke much surprise, alarm or anger anymore. But diaper banks?

Resources: Document

The High/Scope Perry Preschool study examined the short- and long-term effects of a high-quality preschool education program for young children living in poverty, collecting data on the students through age 40. The program operated from 1962 to 1967 in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Discover Article

Income inequality is not the only gap that has been growing dramatically in the United States over the past forty years. The gap in educational achievement between the rich and everybody else has widened greatly as well.

Dig Deeper

Professor Jane Costello of Duke University Medical School was conducting a study of rural children in the Great Smokey Mountains of North Carolina, a quarter of whom were Cherokee, when the tribe opened a casino. This allowed Professor Costello to conduct a natural experiment because soon casino profits started flowing to Cherokee families and cut the Cherokee poverty rate by half.

Dig Deeper

Proven programs like high-quality early care and ed and the nurse-family partnership can help buffer the effects of poverty. But if we really want to improve life prospects for poor kids we need to reduce the number of poor kids. Which means increasing their families’ incomes.

Infographic

This PDF takes you through the screens of the Child Olympics activity. We see that the United States performed poorly in the latest Child Olympics - in infant mortality, child poverty, preschool enrollment and high school graduation.

Infographic

Family income earned by the top 5% and the bottom 20% grew in tandem from the 1940s to the 1970s. But since then, income for the top 5% has grown and grown and grown while income for the bottom 20% has stagnated.

Infographic

Many nations use government assistance and tax programs to raise children and families out of poverty. To see how much these transfers and taxes matter, compare the child poverty rates BEFORE and AFTER government benefits. Which countries end up with the lowest percentage of their children living in poverty? And which the highest?

Video Clip

Economists rarely turn their attention to the world of early childhood and preschool. But with a wealth of scientific research pointing to the importance of a child’s earliest years, several economists are worried about our investments in early childhood.

Video Clip

The Raising of America reframes the way we look at early child health and development. This ambitious documentary series and multimedia initiative by the producers of UNNATURAL CAUSES: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? explores how a strong start for all our kids leads not only to better individual life course outcomes (learning, earning and physical and mental health) but also to a healthier, safer, better educated and more prosperous and equitable America.

Video Clip

This is the 30-second trailer that you can embed on your website for The Raising of America: Early Childhood and the Future of Our Nation, the 5-part documentary series that seeks to reframe the way Americans look at early childhood health and development.